Kenley Obas sees a lot of similarities between central Alabama today and the Boston area where he grew up.

Back then, Boston had a lot of technology talent and resources but had not yet become the cutting-edge business hub that it is today. He thinks the Montgomery area has the same potential.

"The tech talent here is kind of disjointed," said Obas. "Boston was the same way. Now it's a startup haven because someone took the initiative to try to combine the resources. Somebody has to bring everyone to the table."

Obas, a Kindred Technology Group creative director and Alabama State University professor, has become part of a movement designed to do just that.

Last week, tech workers, business leaders and creative professionals from all walks of life got together in downtown Montgomery to talk about the future here. Adam Warnke, who helped organize the event, said the start time was delayed because "people kept filing in."

"It went way better than we expected," Warnke said.

He said well over 100 people were there, across several generations. Many of them, he said, had owned software companies or operated under the radar for years.

"You never hear of them because they don't advertise," he said. "It was successful in that it brought them all out."

Co-organizer Boyd Stephens of networking engineering company Netelysis reminded the crowd of all of the expertise and resources along the Interstate 85 corridor from Montgomery to Auburn, including major universities, state government, the automotive industry and the Air Force. The tools are here, he said, to grow a creative culture in the mold of Silicon Valley in California.

Just as importantly, the interest seems to be here.

"If you had 100 people (at the event), it's a good sign," Paul Swamidass said. "I think you've got a nucleus to get started."

Swamidass would know. He's the director of the College of Engineering and professor of operations management at Auburn University and has followed the development of Silicon Valley, as well as similar movements across the nation.

Of the communities that have found success with this kind of move, he said the Montgomery area's potential most closely resembles Austin, Texas, which now rivals Silicon Valley in tech exports. While he warned that it takes a long time to find success on that level, "you have to start somewhere."

The Austin area had its own advantages, including oil money that was being poured into the community. Central Alabama has a unique advantage in the automotive infrastructure in place from the Hyundai plant in Montgomery to the Kia plant in West Point, Georgia, Swamidass said.

"We can build on that, on the backs of the auto industry," he said.

Zack Jourdan sees the potential too, but he doesn't want the Montgomery area to be the next Silicon Valley.

"Silicon Valley got its name from the PC and chip work that was done there in the 1970s," said Jourdan, an information systems professor at Auburn Montgomery. "The real profit and growth is in apps. I'd like it to be called the Alabama app corridor."

Jourdan attended the Montgomery event last week and called it "one of the best collections of tech people I've ever seen in one place."

Many of those people wrote down suggestions for how to improve the quality of life here and encourage a better creative culture and more tech entrepreneurship. Jourdan's suggestions included the need for companies here to invest more in training for their employees, and to craft better career paths to avoid losing them to other cities.

Yet the most common problems mentioned by attendees had nothing to do with money or resources. They were about mindset and perception — a cynicism and lack of positive thinking that often hamstrings the area.

That should be the easiest change to make, Jourdan said.

"I think in the last 10 years, the city has made great strides," he said. "It's just a matter of getting the word out about the community."